Pyrrhic
by Flyaway21
Summary: Madness is a slow descent. Alice tries to skip steps.


_"__I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark." _**Raymond Carver**

* * *

When Alice sleeps, she dreams of death. More precisely, she dreams of the million little tells that foreshadow death. The screaming and the bleeding and the begging before that final sudden cut of silence.

Not her death of course. Theirs. The ones who were lucky enough to meet their end in the battle for Wonderland.

Every night without fail she sees their faces. Every night to the point where she can pick out the exact shade of muddy brown that fear had darkened Dodo's eyes to, eyes that were normally pale and warm like caramel. Or the way that Tweedledum had knelt over the body that had been his twin, speechless and still like he didn't quite believe anything was real, like he was waiting for the world to shift and make things right again. The shape of his mouth frozen in a perfect O.

Or the way that the March hare had been left to bleed out on the flat stretch of land that the Red Queen's army had taken back. He'd slipped through their fingers, been trampled before they even realized what had happened.

The white rabbit was another of the lucky ones. Bright fur stained red. _Like the roses, like the roses,_ her mind had helpfully supplied at the time. Head almost completely removed from his shoulders, floppy when the ground shook, red crusting the silken fur of his ears. Eyes wide and unstaring.

There were others too. So many others. Alice didn't know all their names, never got a chance to find out.

But they were winning. Tired and dirty and maddened but winning.

So when the Red Queen smiled indulgently down at them from her perch above the battlefield, they couldn't have been expected to know. She was after all quite mad. And not in the good way.

The smile that didn't falter when her knights fell, one after another.

Smiled when they broke through the front lines, shattered the final piece of defense that stood between them and her.

Smiled like it was all some joke, a play for her personal amusement. As if she remained untouchable no matter how many of her soldiers died.

Alice aimed her sword towards the queen, forced her way through inch by inch. Step by step, hacking and limping and pushing through the bodies that surrounded them.

Cards fell, pieces ripped on the muddy floor. Hatter followed close behind, a silent shadow, graceful even now, even in the chaos and Alice wondered how it was that someone with destruction in their veins had become a Hatter. Decided she might be better off not knowing.

It would be the two of them- the girl who fell through the rabbit hole and the Mad Hatter and they would kill the Red Queen and it would all be alright.

Her and Hatter like it had been since the start when Cheshire had brought her to that first tea party. Her and Hatter. And they would kill her now, no trial, no wait, because the corpses outnumbered the living and Alice was not prepared to lose one more friend.

She stumbled up the stairs towards the Red Queen, Hatter at her back, the heat from his body cutting through the adrenaline in her veins. She was buzzing, filled with bees and her body had no chance at all in keeping up with her mind. Filled with the illogical certainty that she could go on forever even as her arms trembled, even when her legs ached and begged to give out.

One more. She would only have to kill one more and it would be over.

Alice faced the queen who smiled.

When looking back, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact second that Alice understood. She only remembered feeling dread cut through the fog of battle like a white bolt of heat. Alice had seen, had finally understood what that smile meant when it was too late. The Red Queen opened her mouth, some terrible cross between a laugh and a scream escaping.

The Jabberwocky had come.

Had dug its way upward through the dirt even as Alice fell down. Unfurled its wings and everything shifted, a sudden vicious jolt. Up was down and they were losing, losing. Flames and thunder the smell of bubbling flesh.

They were all dying, all screaming.

Alice shook in terror and it was wrong and it hurt but that small still sane part of her knew at least she wouldn't be alone. They wouldn't be alone. A small comfort to die surrounded by friends and Alice wondered if this was the way it was all supposed to go, a trail laid out beneath her feet when she was born. That maybe the stars had written her death here, now.

And then Hatter had turned to look at her, eyes shocked and betrayed, bleeding from a hundred scrapes, knuckles torn wide open until she could glimpse the bones beneath but he still reached for her, shaking. Tried to grab hold of her hands that were disappearing, light creeping along her veins and she was falling, falling, falling.

Fighting to stay there, to anchor herself but her body was not her own.

The Jabberwocky turned everything to ash and Alice was gone.

* * *

She wakes because there is noise all around. Familiar noises- the shuffle of feet, distant coughs, the rumble of a cart passing down the bleached hallway. The nausea is there like always. It never fades. She barely has enough time to lean over the bed before she is violently sick. The nurses learned early to leave a small bucket within reach.

There is a pattern she follows after waking with the diligence of a saint. It's important not to think of what the Red Queen might have done to them, to the ones who weren't lucky enough to die quickly, if there was anyone left at all. She can't think of that while sweat is still cooling on her skin. That will come later.

She gets out of bed, wonders how much she has changed during the night. Knows without testing the handle that her door is locked. They always lock them in at night. There is a window, bared as well. She stands in front of it, looks out, presses the tips of her fingers against cool glass that she can only just reach between the rusted bars.

Once she has gained some semblance of control over her body, once her panic has simmered low enough that her heart is no longer actively trying to kill her, she can lift the gates and allow it all to flood back in. Pain and horror and that crushing pressure at the base of her throat that she can never manage to swallow down.

The very worst she saves for last.

Alice stands by the window and thinks this is what you did to them.

* * *

The doctor tells Alice that she's been there six months. Half a year as of this morning, like time was supposed to mean anything anymore.

Six months since she was dropped back into this world that is no longer her own, covered in blood and screaming just as viciously as the first time she entered it nineteen years before.

Dropped into the middle of a cobblestone street, the wheels of a carriage had only missed her by a few precious inches. Alice didn't notice when the driver pulled the team of horses to a halt, jumped from his seat, a snarl on his lips, ready to give whatever drunk stumbling in the way a piece of his mind. And perhaps his fist.

Alice hadn't noticed anything. Not when it was impossible to breathe. It was only later that she found out it had been because of her screaming. Couldn't stop, even when her throat bled. Just screamed.

The crowds had gathered, she'd been told that later as well. A crowd of men in pressed suits and women encumbered in ruffled lace, not a speck of dirt, not a hint of blood. Children had cried, the nurse informed her with something akin to admonishment like Alice was supposed to feel ashamed for shattering in public view.

She'd laid there surrounded on the street, people unable to keep from staring but unwilling to come closer until men had arrived, scooped her up, carried her away and injected her with something that made the world heavy and full, oversaturated. When it crept into her veins and took her all the way down, she'd dreamed of screaming too.

The first week had been filled with brief snatches of consciousness, moments that appear dreamlike looking back. She still can't be sure which parts were real and which weren't.

The doctors thinks she's crazy and maybe she is. They like to give her specific words for the horrible things in her mind. Depressive. Psychotic. Dissociative. Like slapping a name on her condition will speed up the healing process.

They tell her it might be caused by trauma. Or the innate weakness of her gender. Ah, the drawbacks of being female. The doctors are sympathetic. The doctors are hopeful. They talk about treatment and medicine and a normal life that could be waiting at the end of it all if she is willing to work hard enough. If she is willing to face reality.

Each morning they bring her pills and pills, different colors and shapes and sizes. Drink this. Eat this. Alice doesn't shrink, doesn't grow tall but she feels herself stretched. Snippets of memory gone. Time disappears in rushed intervals. Some days it takes longer than others to remember her own name. But she never forgets them so she can't find it within herself to care.

She needs to get out of here but there's nowhere to go.

Her second night at the hospital, she'd snuck out. After fighting in battles with a sword in her hand, things like clamoring down the metal pipe attached to the hospital came surprisingly easy.

It had taken the entire night but she'd walked to that tree. Had knelt on the muddy ground, ready to fall again. Fall down down down.

Down into Wonderland but there was no rabbit to follow because he was dead. _Red like the roses, off with his head_.

There was no hole. But that was okay. She could still make it okay. She'd started digging, hadn't stopped even when her nails had broken and her fingers bled.

Hadn't stopped until sunrise brought along an old man who'd laid his hand gently on her shoulders, who'd spoken to her with soft meaningless words. They'd taken her away after that, hammered crisscrossed bars across her window. She hadn't tried to run away since.

* * *

Hatter is there when Alice wakes. Sitting at the foot of her bed, back ramrod straight, looking so decidedly out of place in the dim grey room with his wild hair and bright clothes and that feral gleam in his eyes. But it's more than that. He-like the rest of Wonderland-are part of something else. Something other. Something that clearly doesn't belong here. Alice wonders if that includes her now. Even in the hospital where people who dont belong go, Alice is still out of place.

It takes a few seconds of her studying him to realize what is wrong.

"Where is your hat?" She asks, knowing he will not answer. They never do. She likes to ask anyway. Her voice comes out barely there, the croak of a frog. She can't remember the last time she spoke aloud.

The room is cold, chilled by the draft of the window that some faceless nurse left cracked open. Alice pulls the blanket tighter around her, stares at the window and wonders if the fall might kill her. If not, she's sure it would break bones and she isn't eager for months and months of bedrest. The thought is unbearable so she shoves it from her mind. Closes her eyes and feels the cold seep into her bare fingers and toes, numbing.

"I didn't mean to leave you." She said. A confession to nothing because he wasn't there and chances were, he died and she would never be able to earn his forgiveness, never able to make him understand that it was all a mistake. That she knows she's not supposed to be alive but isn't sure what to do about it.

"You're trying to forget." It takes a long time for Alice to realize that the voice wasn't all in her head. Not like all this is. That she wasn't the one who spoke.

"I'm not myself anymore." She replies, refusing to open her eyes because then she won't be able to see.

Then he'll be gone.

All Alice has left is to remember and all she wants is to forget. This particular forever has been going on long enough and she wants a new one.

* * *

There are other patients. Sometimes when Alice is let out of her room, they swarm around like ants kicked by a child. Some are like her, confused and complacent, hair askew, dark eyes that flitter this way and that seeing things that the others can't.

And then there are some who are louder, unable to keep the crazy contained to scratching or pacing or muttering under their breath. They are flashy, impossible to ignore with muscles that jerk under skin like their bodies are trying to tear themselves apart from the inside out.

They go through a red door strapped down, flailing and screaming and cursing.

When they come back, if they do, they are boneless and quiet. Empty.

The treatment is controversial. Electroshock therapy. The doctors warn her about the side affects the first time she asks. Memory loss. Comas. Death. Smoke leaking from her ears. Eyes dripping from their sockets.

The doctors are hopeful for her condition without resorting to such measures. Desperate might be a better word for it. After all, nothing has helped. Alice hasn't let it.

They don't want to be responsible for her death. Alice can't fault them for that. She knows what it's like to be responsible for the death of others.

The doctors are hopeful.

They try to tell her that it is all in her head. Plenty of reasons for the scars on her arms and legs. It must have happened when she had an episode. That when you're crazy you're prone to violence, might hurt yourself. Might do things like walk barefoot through woods. Climb out of windows in the middle of the night. Dig holes in the ground until your fingers break and bleed.

They only give electroshock to the violent ones, the ones already at their end of their rope.

So when one of the doctor comes with a tired smile and offers her one little red pill and one white, she digs her fingers into his outstretched arm with sudden strength, twists and bites down hard. Skin tears and copper swells in her mouth, warmth dribbling past her chin.

_Blood blood blood_ and Alice feels sick so she just digs her teeth in harder. Hatter is there. Cheshire smiles in the air above him, yellow and wicked and amused. She can see them from the corner of her streaming eyes, only distantly aware that there is pressure at the top of her head, at her jaw, doesn't really feel the pain when their fingers pry her apart, when they slam something hard at the side of her face.

The darkness takes her after and she remembers nothing at all.

* * *

Alice is wheeled through the red doors the next morning.

Something shoved into her mouth. So you won't bite through your tongue, one of the nurses explain. Arms and legs strapped down tight, a brief surge of panic at being helpless. Sudden flash of heat, not the jabberwocky. Not the jabberwocky.

Hatter sits in the corner, doesn't watch.

"You never told me why a raven is like a writing desk." She tells him over the thrum of electricity just behind her, warm and eager already. The crackle of static in the air that she can taste reminds her of blood. Or perhaps it is only traces of the doctor from yesterday still caught between her teeth.

Hatter gives no sign that he's heard her and Alice feels a single pang of regret that she will never know the answer now. But that's okay. Or it will be soon.

She remembers what Cheshire told her so long ago. To the Alice she was before becoming the Alice she was supposed to be.

Before the Red Queen and the Jabberwocky ripped it all away.

Only mad people come here. Alice hadn't liked that at the time.

But as they fit the wires around her head, small ticks of leather and metal cool against her skin, Alice thinks not yet.

Alice thinks but soon.


End file.
